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The Iowa state Board of Regents will gather Thursday for a special meeting in Urbandale to select the presidential search committee and approve the selection of Carver College of Medicine Dean Jean Robillard as vice president for medical affairs.

The regents will vote on the nominations of five initial members of the search committee. The nominees are UI law professor Jonathan Carlson, who led the search to replace Mary Sue Coleman; UI psychology professor Lee Anna Clark from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences; Leonard Hadley, retired Maytag Corp. chairman and CEO and rain forest board member; UI Liberal Arts and Sciences Dean Linda Maxson and UI internal medicine professor Paul Rothman.

Next, the group will recommend others to fill out a 12-person search committee.

In the e-mail, Johnsen, the dean of the College of Dentistry, asked the UI community for nominations, thanked people for their support and highlighted aspects of the new search.

After a committee is appointed, it will meet with campus constituencies to identify what it wants in the new president and how to get that person.

Johnsen targeted July 1 as an end date, promised openness and regular reports to the regents and UI.

"Our goal is to have a president named by July 1, 2007 -- an ambitious timetable. We will be as open as possible regarding the search process but will maintain the confidentiality of individual candidates in order to assure the strongest pool," Johnsen said in the e-mail.

On-campus interviews, a contentious issue in the initial presidential search, will be left up to the search committee to decide and not the regents.

"If the top candidates all agree to appear on campus, this becomes a moot point," Johnsen wrote. "However, what if the top candidates decline to appear on campus and those candidates are clearly superior to the next tier of candidates? Then the search committee could be faced with the dilemma of changing our tradition or considering less-qualified candidates.

"We expect this matter to be actively discussed as we proceed, and we seek your input."

It has been nearly a year since David Skorton announced he was leaving UI for Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. An initial seven-month, $215,000 search ended when regents rejected four finalists and disbanded the search committee that recommended them Nov. 17.

After reconsidering the finalists at Gov. Tom Vilsack's urging, regents reached out to one candidate who rebuked the interest Dec. 6, officially restarting the search.

The second search kicked off with the Dec. 18 naming of Johnsen to lead the search, a move widely praised on the UI campus.